The mass rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls from Bosnia to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo has reinforced the conventional wisdom that rape and sexual violence are an inevitable feature of war.

But rape is not a fact of all wars and if sexual violence does occur within a war, not all armed groups are necessarily involved, experts say.

“There has been a certain kind of rhetoric that all armed groups through history have engaged in sexual violence. But not all armed groups do engage in sexual violence. It’s not just something that always happens in war. Some armed groups can and do prohibit sexual violence,” said Elisabeth Wood, an expert on wartime sexual violence and professor of political science at Yale University.

“Knowing that rape is not inevitable in war gives us hope that things can change. We have to better understand the causes of sexual violence during war to be more effective in preventing it,” Wood told Thomson Reuters Foundation, speaking on the sidelines of an event on sexual violence in Bogota this week.

She cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of a protracted war where rape has not been common in recent decades.

“Rape appears to be rare despite violations committed by both parties – Israelis and Palestinians – of other international laws of war,” Wood told an audience of survivors of sexual violence and government officials in the Colombian capital.

According to a recent study by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), of the 48 conflicts in Africa between 1989 and 2009, involving 236 armed groups — including state security forces, rebel groups, and pro-government militias — 64 percent of armed groups were not reported to have engaged in any form of sexual violence.

While in countries such as Sierra Leone and Colombia it is well-documented that all warring factions have carried out sexual violence against women, in some wars not all sides do.

Research by Wood and other academics in a 2013 United States Institute of Peace (USIP) report notes that armed groups even within the same war do not perpetrate sexual violence to the same extent or in the same forms.

During the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador, for example, state forces reportedly perpetrated rape and sexual violence during military incursions and against male and female prisoners. But in contrast, sexual violence by the country’s leftist rebel group, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), during the civil war was “quite rare”, the USIP report says.

In addition, not all women in a particular conflict are targeted by armed groups, Wood said. Sexual violence against women can be directed at particular ethnic groups, such as the Tutsis in Rwanda and Muslim women in the Bosnian War.

Another conventional wisdom challenged by Wood and other academics is that wartime rape is often seen as a strategy, tool or weapon of war ordered by commanders.

Wartime rape is often not an intentional strategy of war and it is more frequently tolerated than ordered, Wood said.

“Rape can be tolerated by commanders even though there has been no explicit order to carry out rape because from the point of view of the commanders punishing those responsible could endanger group cohesion and it costs more to repress the practice, which they don’t view as serious, than to punish it,” she said.

Even if commanders in effective control of their troops did not order their fighters to carry out rape they are still accountable for those war crimes committed under international law, Wood said.

As such, prosecutors during international war crime trials should step up efforts to prosecute warlords based on evidence of whether commanders knew or should have known about sexual violence carried out in the ranks, the USIP report says.

Another common misconception is that rape is most often carried out “by unruly and undisciplined rebel forces,” the USIP report notes. It says recent research shows that state armed groups are far more likely than rebel groups to be reported as perpetrators of rape and other types of sexual violence.

“This finding may strengthen efforts to hold states accountable for violations by their representatives or within their borders. Research shows that states can be effectively named and shamed and recent international campaigns have aimed to do just that,” the report said.

The mass rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls from Bosnia to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo has reinforced the conventional wisdom that rape and sexual violence are an inevitable feature of war.

But rape is not a fact of all wars and if sexual violence does occur within a war, not all armed groups are necessarily involved, experts say.

“There has been a certain kind of rhetoric that all armed groups through history have engaged in sexual violence. But not all armed groups do engage in sexual violence. It’s not just something that always happens in war. Some armed groups can and do prohibit sexual violence,” said Elisabeth Wood, an expert on wartime sexual violence and professor of political science at Yale University.

“Knowing that rape is not inevitable in war gives us hope that things can change. We have to better understand the causes of sexual violence during war to be more effective in preventing it,” Wood told Thomson Reuters Foundation, speaking on the sidelines of an event on sexual violence in Bogota this week.

She cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of a protracted war where rape has not been common in recent decades.

“Rape appears to be rare despite violations committed by both parties – Israelis and Palestinians – of other international laws of war,” Wood told an audience of survivors of sexual violence and government officials in the Colombian capital.

According to a recent study by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), of the 48 conflicts in Africa between 1989 and 2009, involving 236 armed groups — including state security forces, rebel groups, and pro-government militias — 64 percent of armed groups were not reported to have engaged in any form of sexual violence.

While in countries such as Sierra Leone and Colombia it is well-documented that all warring factions have carried out sexual violence against women, in some wars not all sides do.

Research by Wood and other academics in a 2013 United States Institute of Peace (USIP) report notes that armed groups even within the same war do not perpetrate sexual violence to the same extent or in the same forms.

During the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador, for example, state forces reportedly perpetrated rape and sexual violence during military incursions and against male and female prisoners. But in contrast, sexual violence by the country’s leftist rebel group, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), during the civil war was “quite rare”, the USIP report says.

In addition, not all women in a particular conflict are targeted by armed groups, Wood said. Sexual violence against women can be directed at particular ethnic groups, such as the Tutsis in Rwanda and Muslim women in the Bosnian War.

Another conventional wisdom challenged by Wood and other academics is that wartime rape is often seen as a strategy, tool or weapon of war ordered by commanders.

Wartime rape is often not an intentional strategy of war and it is more frequently tolerated than ordered, Wood said.

“Rape can be tolerated by commanders even though there has been no explicit order to carry out rape because from the point of view of the commanders punishing those responsible could endanger group cohesion and it costs more to repress the practice, which they don’t view as serious, than to punish it,” she said.

Even if commanders in effective control of their troops did not order their fighters to carry out rape they are still accountable for those war crimes committed under international law, Wood said.

As such, prosecutors during international war crime trials should step up efforts to prosecute warlords based on evidence of whether commanders knew or should have known about sexual violence carried out in the ranks, the USIP report says.

Another common misconception is that rape is most often carried out “by unruly and undisciplined rebel forces,” the USIP report notes. It says recent research shows that state armed groups are far more likely than rebel groups to be reported as perpetrators of rape and other types of sexual violence.

“This finding may strengthen efforts to hold states accountable for violations by their representatives or within their borders. Research shows that states can be effectively named and shamed and recent international campaigns have aimed to do just that,” the report said.

When Michelle Bachelet takes office as president of Chile for the second time on Tuesday, the person who places the blue, white and red striped presidential sash round her neck will be Isabel Allende – the first woman in Chilean history to be leader of the senate.

One in four lawmakers in Latin America are women, a proportion second only to Europe, and a continent better known as the home of machismo is now leading the way in drawing more women into politics – enabling them gradually to push women’s, social and educational issues to the fore.

A key reason for the growth in the number of congresswomen and female senators in Latin America is the adoption of quotas for women in parliament by 16 of the region’s countries in recent years.

Some laws require candidate lists for local and legislative elections to include a minimum female representation of 30 percent, and in Costa Rica, the 2009 electoral law states that 50 percent of all candidates for public office must be women.

Recent elections using the quotas have had a marked effect on the makeup of national legislatures.

In Colombia, where parliamentary elections were held last weekend, 21 women were elected to the 102-seat Senate – up four percent from 2010. This follows a gender quota law passed in 2011 that requires 30 percent of candidates for all publicly elected offices to be women.

In Honduras, the number of women elected to Congress increased from 19.5 percent in 2009 to 25 percent after legislative elections in November 2013, and presidential and parliamentary elections later this year in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Panama, where mandatory female quotas are also in place, will give women candidates a boost in those countries.

In Bolivia, a law passed in 2010 that requires candidate lists for both the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate, to have equal numbers of men and women, will be implemented during elections later this year.

UN Women, the U.N. women’s agency, says 30 percent is considered the ‘critical mass’ for women’s representation in parliament, yet fewer than one in five parliamentarians worldwide are women.

Rwanda stands out as the most striking exception, with women holding 56.3 percent of seats in the lower house, the highest proportion in the world, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 2012.

One of the biggest barriers to getting more women into politics is their traditional role as mothers and wives, and the need to juggle family and professional life, UN Women says.

Caring for children, the sick and the elderly still falls largely on women’s shoulders, and prevents more women from entering both politics and the workplace.

The other challenge is ensuring that gender quotas are put into practice.

In Brazil, for example, a 1997 law requires at least 30 percent of candidates for the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, to be women. Dilma Rousseff, the president, is a woman and is running for re-election this year, but women currently make up only 9 percent of the Chamber of Deputies and 16 percent of the Senate.

Critics of gender quotas say the quota system results in women being elected based on sex rather than merit and that reserving seats for women is undemocratic, and by definition discriminatory.

Whether or not quotas is the right way to tackle the widespread gender inequality in politics, what’s less controversial is that women do bring a different perspective to decision-making.

When there are more women in parliament, more laws on education, social and environmental issues tend to get passed, and gender issues, including laws to protect women against violence and guarantee their reproductive rights, are more likely to come to the fore and be approved.

That’s significant in Latin America, a region with high levels of domestic and sexual violence against women and impunity for crimes against women, in particular for femicide in Central America, defined as the murder of a girl or woman by a man because of her gender.

Now that the number of women in Latin America’s legislatures is on the rise, there’s a better chance that tackling these issues will become a priority on the political agenda.

For more blogs by Thomson Reuters Foundation journalists visit www.trust.org

Photo: Socialist Party Senator Isabel Allende (C) takes her seat as president of the Chilean Senate at the new Congress’s first session, before the inaugural ceremony of Michelle Bachelet as president for her second, non-consecutive, term. Picture Valparaiso, March 11, 2014, REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez

When Michelle Bachelet takes office as president of Chile for the second time on Tuesday, the person who places the blue, white and red striped presidential sash round her neck will be Isabel Allende – the first woman in Chilean history to be leader of the senate.

One in four lawmakers in Latin America are women, a proportion second only to Europe, and a continent better known as the home of machismo is now leading the way in drawing more women into politics – enabling them gradually to push women’s, social and educational issues to the fore.

A key reason for the growth in the number of congresswomen and female senators in Latin America is the adoption of quotas for women in parliament by 16 of the region’s countries in recent years.

Some laws require candidate lists for local and legislative elections to include a minimum female representation of 30 percent, and in Costa Rica, the 2009 electoral law states that 50 percent of all candidates for public office must be women.

Recent elections using the quotas have had a marked effect on the makeup of national legislatures.

In Colombia, where parliamentary elections were held last weekend, 21 women were elected to the 102-seat Senate – up four percent from 2010. This follows a gender quota law passed in 2011 that requires 30 percent of candidates for all publicly elected offices to be women.

In Honduras, the number of women elected to Congress increased from 19.5 percent in 2009 to 25 percent after legislative elections in November 2013, and presidential and parliamentary elections later this year in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Panama, where mandatory female quotas are also in place, will give women candidates a boost in those countries.

In Bolivia, a law passed in 2010 that requires candidate lists for both the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate, to have equal numbers of men and women, will be implemented during elections later this year.

UN Women, the U.N. women’s agency, says 30 percent is considered the ‘critical mass’ for women’s representation in parliament, yet fewer than one in five parliamentarians worldwide are women.

Rwanda stands out as the most striking exception, with women holding 56.3 percent of seats in the lower house, the highest proportion in the world, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 2012.

One of the biggest barriers to getting more women into politics is their traditional role as mothers and wives, and the need to juggle family and professional life, UN Women says.

Caring for children, the sick and the elderly still falls largely on women’s shoulders, and prevents more women from entering both politics and the workplace.

The other challenge is ensuring that gender quotas are put into practice.

In Brazil, for example, a 1997 law requires at least 30 percent of candidates for the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, to be women. Dilma Rousseff, the president, is a woman and is running for re-election this year, but women currently make up only 9 percent of the Chamber of Deputies and 16 percent of the Senate.

Critics of gender quotas say the quota system results in women being elected based on sex rather than merit and that reserving seats for women is undemocratic, and by definition discriminatory.

Whether or not quotas is the right way to tackle the widespread gender inequality in politics, what’s less controversial is that women do bring a different perspective to decision-making.

When there are more women in parliament, more laws on education, social and environmental issues tend to get passed, and gender issues, including laws to protect women against violence and guarantee their reproductive rights, are more likely to come to the fore and be approved.

That’s significant in Latin America, a region with high levels of domestic and sexual violence against women and impunity for crimes against women, in particular for femicide in Central America, defined as the murder of a girl or woman by a man because of her gender.

Now that the number of women in Latin America’s legislatures is on the rise, there’s a better chance that tackling these issues will become a priority on the political agenda.

For more blogs by Thomson Reuters Foundation journalists visit www.trust.org

Photo: Socialist Party Senator Isabel Allende (C) takes her seat as president of the Chilean Senate at the new Congress’s first session, before the inaugural ceremony of Michelle Bachelet as president for her second, non-consecutive, term. Picture Valparaiso, March 11, 2014, REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez

Potholes are suddenly filled with cement, stretches of roads are paved and local officials rush to inaugurate often unfinished public buildings. It’s one way to show that public funds have been well spent under their watch as a way of helping the political party they represent to do well at the polls.

Yet election-rigging scandals, allegations of election fraud and vote-buying are an all too common feature of the political landscape in Colombia.

In Colombia’s parliamentary, local and presidential elections over the decades, local media have reported ineligible voters casting ballots, including some using fake or stolen identity cards, and tampered electoral registers that include the names of dead citizens or have names listed twice.

In past elections, local camera crews in slum areas have shown how votes are exchanged for a plate of meat, rice and plantain, or for bricks, roof tiles and other building materials. Local media have reported votes being allegedly bought for around $15 a go.

There’s also the so-called “pregnant ballot box”, which involves extra ballots being included to boost the vote tally for a particular candidate.

Free buses are known to transport people to polling stations on the condition they cast their vote for a particular candidate.

In the run up to election day, candidates are also known to deliver food parcels door-to-door in poor areas and throw lavish street parties in the hope of getting more votes.

And there are always claims being made about some candidates having alleged ties to illegal armed groups and drug traffickers.

It’s likely the upcoming parliamentary elections on Sunday, March 9, won’t be much different when nearly 33 million eligible voters can elect who will sit in the country’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate.

The Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), an independent monitoring group based in Bogota, has warned about wads of cash circulating on the campaign trail in the run up to the parliamentary elections across some of Colombia’s provinces.

“The main risk during this last week ahead of the elections is the moving around of resources in cash. This is an issue that has not been possible to control and can trigger crimes like the buying of votes,” Alejandra Barrios, head of the watchdog, told El Tiempo newspaper in a recent interview.

She singled out the provinces of La Guajira and Caqueta, “where we have found that a lot of money is going around and that many candidates are fishing for votes.”

Nearly 2,500 candidates are competing for a total of 268 seats in Colombia’s lower house and senate.

VOTING UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Like in previous elections in Colombia, the so-called “dry law” will be put in place over the coming weekend. It means the selling of alcohol is banned the night before, during and a day after elections.

The law aims to stop candidates throwing parties in the run up to elections as a way of encouraging people to vote for them, stem violence and avoid people voting while being drunk.

It’s not difficult, though, to find an obliging shopkeeper who is willing to sell a few beers during the elections.

Much is at stake in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos will be looking to maintain his big parliamentary majority and gauge voter support before presidential elections scheduled for May 25.

If Santos and his coalition parties do well in the parliamentary elections, it will be seen as an endorsement for the ongoing peace process in Havana, which his government started with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in November 2012.

Meanwhile, former president Alvaro Uribe, who has become Colombia’s de facto opposition leader, will be looking to secure up to 30 seats in the senate from candidates running for the conservative Democratic Center party he created. In such a way, he’s looking to form a kind of Colombian version of the Tea Party.

DRUGS FINANCE CAMPAIGNS?

Another issue looming over the forthcoming elections is the lack of transparency in campaign financing, poor controls to prevent drug money bankrolling election campaigns and inadequate oversight about the origin of donations given to candidates.

Last year, Colombia passed a law requiring candidates to report in real time from whom and how contributions to their election campaign are being spent.

So far, 60 percent of candidates running for the lower house and senate have not yet posted their campaign financing online, according to El Tiempo newspaper.

Corruption in election campaigns is a problem that has got worse since the 1990s, says Colombia’s former attorney general Viviane Morales, who is now running for senate.

“The rising cost of political campaigns goes hand in hand with the rise of corruption,” Morales is quoted as saying in a recent interview with El Tiempo.

Photo: In a file photo, men drink beer in Hanoi. REUTERS/Kham/Files

For more blogs by Thomson Reuters Foundation journalists visit www.trust.org

Potholes are suddenly filled with cement, stretches of roads are paved and local officials rush to inaugurate often unfinished public buildings. It’s one way to show that public funds have been well spent under their watch as a way of helping the political party they represent to do well at the polls.

Yet election-rigging scandals, allegations of election fraud and vote-buying are an all too common feature of the political landscape in Colombia.

In Colombia’s parliamentary, local and presidential elections over the decades, local media have reported ineligible voters casting ballots, including some using fake or stolen identity cards, and tampered electoral registers that include the names of dead citizens or have names listed twice.

In past elections, local camera crews in slum areas have shown how votes are exchanged for a plate of meat, rice and plantain, or for bricks, roof tiles and other building materials. Local media have reported votes being allegedly bought for around $15 a go.

There’s also the so-called “pregnant ballot box”, which involves extra ballots being included to boost the vote tally for a particular candidate.

Free buses are known to transport people to polling stations on the condition they cast their vote for a particular candidate.

In the run up to election day, candidates are also known to deliver food parcels door-to-door in poor areas and throw lavish street parties in the hope of getting more votes.

And there are always claims being made about some candidates having alleged ties to illegal armed groups and drug traffickers.

It’s likely the upcoming parliamentary elections on Sunday, March 9, won’t be much different when nearly 33 million eligible voters can elect who will sit in the country’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate.

The Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), an independent monitoring group based in Bogota, has warned about wads of cash circulating on the campaign trail in the run up to the parliamentary elections across some of Colombia’s provinces.

“The main risk during this last week ahead of the elections is the moving around of resources in cash. This is an issue that has not been possible to control and can trigger crimes like the buying of votes,” Alejandra Barrios, head of the watchdog, told El Tiempo newspaper in a recent interview.

She singled out the provinces of La Guajira and Caqueta, “where we have found that a lot of money is going around and that many candidates are fishing for votes.”

Nearly 2,500 candidates are competing for a total of 268 seats in Colombia’s lower house and senate.

VOTING UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Like in previous elections in Colombia, the so-called “dry law” will be put in place over the coming weekend. It means the selling of alcohol is banned the night before, during and a day after elections.

The law aims to stop candidates throwing parties in the run up to elections as a way of encouraging people to vote for them, stem violence and avoid people voting while being drunk.

It’s not difficult, though, to find an obliging shopkeeper who is willing to sell a few beers during the elections.

Much is at stake in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos will be looking to maintain his big parliamentary majority and gauge voter support before presidential elections scheduled for May 25.

If Santos and his coalition parties do well in the parliamentary elections, it will be seen as an endorsement for the ongoing peace process in Havana, which his government started with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in November 2012.

Meanwhile, former president Alvaro Uribe, who has become Colombia’s de facto opposition leader, will be looking to secure up to 30 seats in the senate from candidates running for the conservative Democratic Center party he created. In such a way, he’s looking to form a kind of Colombian version of the Tea Party.

DRUGS FINANCE CAMPAIGNS?

Another issue looming over the forthcoming elections is the lack of transparency in campaign financing, poor controls to prevent drug money bankrolling election campaigns and inadequate oversight about the origin of donations given to candidates.

Last year, Colombia passed a law requiring candidates to report in real time from whom and how contributions to their election campaign are being spent.

So far, 60 percent of candidates running for the lower house and senate have not yet posted their campaign financing online, according to El Tiempo newspaper.

Corruption in election campaigns is a problem that has got worse since the 1990s, says Colombia’s former attorney general Viviane Morales, who is now running for senate.

“The rising cost of political campaigns goes hand in hand with the rise of corruption,” Morales is quoted as saying in a recent interview with El Tiempo.

Photo: In a file photo, men drink beer in Hanoi. REUTERS/Kham/Files

For more blogs by Thomson Reuters Foundation journalists visit www.trust.org

You are out with a group of friends at a bar and you see a male friend groping a woman.

How should you respond? Turn a blind eye, say something, physically intervene, call the police for help?

It’s one of several scenarios that activist Jackson Katz has put before thousands of high school and university students, professional athletes and soldiers in the United States as part of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) he co-founded in 1993 to tackle violence against women.

Katz’s so-called bystander approach emphasises the crucial role men and peer pressure can play in preventing gender-based violence by encouraging men to confront other men and hold them accountable.

“The bystander approach focuses not on potential perpetrators and victims, but on everyone else around them. In male culture, it’s about getting men who are not abusive to make it clear to their friends, classmates, teammates and co-workers that harassment, abuse or violence against women is not only wrong legally and might get you into trouble, it is also not socially acceptable within the peer culture itself,” Katz told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he lives.

“Gender violence is not usually committed by strangers. It’s more likely to be done by otherwise normal guys: it could be a friend, peer, colleague in your military unit, on your sports team, a guy you go out drinking with. That’s why the bystander approach works.”

While there’s growing recognition among international bodies and policy makers that involving men is crucial to fight gender violence successfully, the issue is still largely seen as a problem that only concerns women and one that’s too often only dealt with by women.

In addition, violence-prevention programmes have traditionally focused on women, such as discouraging women from walking alone at night, improving lighting on campus, and giving out rape alarms, and not on what men can do.

TOO FEW MEN

More men need to get on board because gender violence is first and foremost a men’s issue, Katz says.

“Domestic and sexual violence are huge, worldwide problems but a relatively tiny number of men are involved in trying to prevent them,” he said. “We have such a long way to go. There are still way too few men in positions of significant cultural and political leadership who are seriously tackling this problem.”

A former all-star football player, Katz’s clients include the Boston Red Sox, as well as NASCAR and National Football League teams. He’s also taken his gender violence prevention programme to the U.S. military, training thousands of marines on a dozen bases in the United States and Japan, and more recently to the Australian army.

“The U.S. military has a big problem with sexual assault,” said Katz, who has served on the U.S. Secretary of Defense task force on domestic violence in the military.

Katz’s programme teaches men how to spot warning signs and certain types of behaviour that can escalate if left unchecked, while emphasising the influential role high-ranking military officers have in stemming violence against women in the ranks.

“It’s the generals and colonels whose leadership sets the tone, who are responsible for creating a command climate that discourages sexist abuse. They’re the ones who can make it clear that you will get into trouble or your career will not advance if you’re involved in violence against women,” he said.

For example, if a general or colonel has been well trained and is well informed on the issues, he or she is more likely to make better decisions about individual cases, such as whether or not to push for a court martial or order a non-judicial punishment.”

Still, sexual assault in the U.S. military is a growing problem, latest U.S. government figures show.

Between October 2012 and June 2013 there were 3,553 reports of sexual assault in the military, a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before, according to Pentagon figures.

CHANGING MALE PEER CULTURE

For Katz, focusing on changing peer cultures, whether it’s in the military or sports teams, is key because peer cultures shape social norms about masculinity.

“The military and sports cultures in the U.S. play a very important role in defining what it means to be a man and in shaping social norms of manhood well beyond the military unit and locker room. One way to change social norms is through changing influential institutions like these, which have built-in structures of accountability,” he said.

Over the decades, Katz has encountered both enthusiasm and resistance from men.

“When introducing programmes to prevent violence against women, I always find there are men who are right there with me, and others who push back. You know that some are thinking “This is just another thing they’re throwing on my plate that I have to do,” he said.

“Sometimes people in institutions justify inaction by claiming they don’t want to draw attention to themselves about this issue, lest people think they might actually have a problem.”

More research is needed to measure the impact of the bystander approach and its effectiveness in changing peer culture.

You are out with a group of friends at a bar and you see a male friend groping a woman.

How should you respond? Turn a blind eye, say something, physically intervene, call the police for help?

It’s one of several scenarios that activist Jackson Katz has put before thousands of high school and university students, professional athletes and soldiers in the United States as part of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) he co-founded in 1993 to tackle violence against women.

Katz’s so-called bystander approach emphasises the crucial role men and peer pressure can play in preventing gender-based violence by encouraging men to confront other men and hold them accountable.

“The bystander approach focuses not on potential perpetrators and victims, but on everyone else around them. In male culture, it’s about getting men who are not abusive to make it clear to their friends, classmates, teammates and co-workers that harassment, abuse or violence against women is not only wrong legally and might get you into trouble, it is also not socially acceptable within the peer culture itself,” Katz told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he lives.

“Gender violence is not usually committed by strangers. It’s more likely to be done by otherwise normal guys: it could be a friend, peer, colleague in your military unit, on your sports team, a guy you go out drinking with. That’s why the bystander approach works.”

While there’s growing recognition among international bodies and policy makers that involving men is crucial to fight gender violence successfully, the issue is still largely seen as a problem that only concerns women and one that’s too often only dealt with by women.

In addition, violence-prevention programmes have traditionally focused on women, such as discouraging women from walking alone at night, improving lighting on campus, and giving out rape alarms, and not on what men can do.

TOO FEW MEN

More men need to get on board because gender violence is first and foremost a men’s issue, Katz says.

“Domestic and sexual violence are huge, worldwide problems but a relatively tiny number of men are involved in trying to prevent them,” he said. “We have such a long way to go. There are still way too few men in positions of significant cultural and political leadership who are seriously tackling this problem.”

A former all-star football player, Katz’s clients include the Boston Red Sox, as well as NASCAR and National Football League teams. He’s also taken his gender violence prevention programme to the U.S. military, training thousands of marines on a dozen bases in the United States and Japan, and more recently to the Australian army.

“The U.S. military has a big problem with sexual assault,” said Katz, who has served on the U.S. Secretary of Defense task force on domestic violence in the military.

Katz’s programme teaches men how to spot warning signs and certain types of behaviour that can escalate if left unchecked, while emphasising the influential role high-ranking military officers have in stemming violence against women in the ranks.

“It’s the generals and colonels whose leadership sets the tone, who are responsible for creating a command climate that discourages sexist abuse. They’re the ones who can make it clear that you will get into trouble or your career will not advance if you’re involved in violence against women,” he said.

For example, if a general or colonel has been well trained and is well informed on the issues, he or she is more likely to make better decisions about individual cases, such as whether or not to push for a court martial or order a non-judicial punishment.”

Still, sexual assault in the U.S. military is a growing problem, latest U.S. government figures show.

Between October 2012 and June 2013 there were 3,553 reports of sexual assault in the military, a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before, according to Pentagon figures.

CHANGING MALE PEER CULTURE

For Katz, focusing on changing peer cultures, whether it’s in the military or sports teams, is key because peer cultures shape social norms about masculinity.

“The military and sports cultures in the U.S. play a very important role in defining what it means to be a man and in shaping social norms of manhood well beyond the military unit and locker room. One way to change social norms is through changing influential institutions like these, which have built-in structures of accountability,” he said.

Over the decades, Katz has encountered both enthusiasm and resistance from men.

“When introducing programmes to prevent violence against women, I always find there are men who are right there with me, and others who push back. You know that some are thinking “This is just another thing they’re throwing on my plate that I have to do,” he said.

“Sometimes people in institutions justify inaction by claiming they don’t want to draw attention to themselves about this issue, lest people think they might actually have a problem.”

More research is needed to measure the impact of the bystander approach and its effectiveness in changing peer culture.

BOGOTA (TrustLaw) – When gynaecologist Lilliam Fondeur recently wrote about the plight of a pregnant teenager diagnosed with acute leukaemia in her column in the Dominican Republic’s El Nacional newspaper, little did she know it would revive debate about the country’s blanket ban on abortion and stir public support in favour of the young girl.

Following a change to the constitution in 2010, abortion in the Dominican Republic is banned under any circumstances, even when the mother’s health or life is in danger.

In recent weeks, Fondeur and local women’s rights groups have been campaigning for the 16-year-old girl, who is around 10 weeks pregnant, to undergo potentially life-saving chemotherapy to treat the cancer.

Fondeur tells me rounds of chemotherapy will severely affect, and possibly kill the foetus, which would be regarded as a crime under the country’s stringent abortion laws.

“The treatment will very likely deform the foetus. The young girl should be able to get an abortion as well as the treatment. But doctors in the public health system are afraid to carry out the procedure because it’s unconstitutional,” Fondeur said by telephone from Santo Domingo.

The case of the girl, known as Esperancita, has dominated national headlines over the last week, and there has been an outpouring of support on social media networks for the girl and her mother, who’s been “begging” the ministry of health to authorise the treatment her daughter quickly needs, Fondeur says.

Following mounting public pressure and after several weeks of delay, Esperancita finally underwent chemotherapy on Tuesday, according to local press reports.

“The hospital said it has started the treatment but it’s not clear whether this has really happened. The facts of the case have all been covered up. The doctors should have started treating the young girl earlier. Why the delay?” Foudeur said.

“We hope the case of this girl serves as a symbol to show that the life of a mother must always come first,” she added.

For Fondeur, Esperancita’s case also highlights social inequality in the Dominican Republic, in a country where one in three people live in poverty.

“It’s also a symbol of the plight of poor, young mothers who have to use the public health system. With money, rich women can buy abortions but poor mothers simply don’t have that choice.”

Women who can afford to pay for an abortion can find private doctors willing to perform the procedure and they can also travel abroad, often to the United States to have an abortion there, Fondeur said.

The Dominican Republic’s influential Catholic Church along with a powerful Conservative lobby in Congress, are factors behind the country’s stringent abortion laws, Fondeur says.

Rights group Amnesty International says that in countries where abortion is totally banned, the rates of maternal mortality rise because doctors are unable or are too afraid to provide life-saving treatment when it can affect a pregnancy, even when it’s the only way to save a mother’s life.

The Dominican Republic is not the only country with stringent abortion laws in Central America.

Nicaragua and El Salvador have also forbidden abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, foetal malformation, or if the life of the mother or foetus is in danger.

An American filmmaker is hoping to use the power of viral video to raise awareness about Haiti’s cholera epidemic in much the same way the surprise Internet sensation Kony 2012 got the world talking about the plight of child soldiers under Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.

If David Darg’s award-winning documentary, “Baseball in the time of Cholera”, gets even a fraction of the 100 million hits the Kony video received, there could soon be a lot more people demanding action on Haiti’s epidemic.

Darg’s hard-hitting film aims to heap public pressure on the United Nations to take responsibility for the outbreak which began in October 2010 and continues today.

It says Nepalese troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti brought the disease to the Caribbean nation.

The epidemic has claimed more than 7,200 lives and infected over half a million Haitians - some five percent of the pop­u­la­tion – accord­ing to figures from the Haitian government.

Several scientific studies, including a June 2011 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say U.N. troops were the likely cause of the outbreak.

Darg tells me he hopes the documentary, co-directed by Bryn Mooser, will be a viral success like Kony 2012.

The Kony campaign, which called for the capture of the fugitive leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, attracted massive support on Twitter and Facebook as well as celebrity backing after going viral in March.

Darg’s aim is to generate enough public pressure against the United Nations for it to accept responsibility for the cholera epidemic and provide clean water and sanitation for Haitians.

“It’s a violation of the U.N.’s policy on the environment and human rights. They are completely at fault. They’ve basically brushed the cholera outbreak aside and blamed it on the Haitians,” says the filmmaker and aid worker.

Last May, a U.N. led commission concluded that while the cholera bacteria did not originate “from the native environs of Haiti”, the outbreak was “not the fault of, or delib­er­ate action of, a group or indi­vid­ual”.

SCANDAL

Darg arrived in Haiti immediately after the January 2010 earthquake to help in the relief effort following the disaster.

While in Haiti, he came across the country’s only junior league baseball team, set up by 16-year-old Joseph Alvyns.

Darg started filming Alvyns and his group of friends as they found joy and solace on the baseball pitch.

But filming took an abrupt turn when Alvyn’s mother suddenly died from cholera, exactly a year after the outbreak erupted.

“It was after her death that I took a step back and realised what a scandal it all was. It was then the urgency kicked in to raise awareness about cholera and who was at fault in the documentary,” Darg says.

In perhaps one of the documentary’s most poignant scenes, Alvyns stands in a desolate cemetery next to the grave of his mother holding a single red carnation.

“She worked very hard for us. She loved us very much. She will stay in my heart forever,” the teenage boy says as silent tears roll down his cheeks.

Darg isn’t the only ones shining a spotlight on the United Nations’ role.

Last November, a Boston-based rights group, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti,filed claims against the United Nations on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims, demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and a public apology.

“There’s been no news at all about the legal case and no review. Lawyers are considering going through a national court in the U.S.,” Darg says.

The rights group says the United Nations failed to screen its peacekeepers for cholera and allowed untreated waste from a U.N. base in Haiti to be dumped into the country’s main river, contaminating it with the water-borne disease.

The majority of Haitians agree, Darg says.

“Ninety eight percent of people you ask in Haiti think the United Nations is to blame for the cholera outbreak,” he adds.

Members of U.S congress are also putting pressure on the United Nations.

In May, over 75 members signed a letter urging the U.S. government to call on the United Nations to take measures to address the epidemic by improving access to clean water and sanitation, a task estimated to cost up to $1.1 billion.

Meanwhile, Alvyns and thousands of other Haitians wait for some kind of justice and pray that the cholera doesn’t resurge as the hurricane season gets under way.